Shadows in the Garden and Other Stories

By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

A vignette of dream shimmers briefly in my mind. I remember I was crouched in a dark yard, this yard—staring at that same clothesline. I was cold, so cold, and frightened, and I didn't know why. It was far too dark to see anything clearly. I could tell only that there was something hung from the line. Approaching it, I saw how it swung back and forth in the night-wind heavily. It wasn't until I was close enough almost to touch it that I realized what it was.

It was the pale woman's head.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobb's End Books
• Release date: Feb 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393496670

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

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Copyright © 2020 Wayne Kyle Spitzer. All Rights Reserved. Published by Hobb’s End Books, a division of ACME Sprockets & Visions. Cover design Copyright © 2020 Wayne Kyle Spitzer. Please direct all inquiries to: [e-mail]

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this book is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

SHADOWS IN THE GARDEN

Iawake to the sound of rain on my pod. Lying utterly still in the swollen womb of the willow tree, I listen as the drops plink off the hard bark. It feels as though I have slept a long time, and while I am sure I must have dreamed in that time, I cannot recall what I dreamt about.

I push open the pod and crawl out into the rain. Resealing it behind me, I scurry down the wet bark of the willow tree and hop to the ground.

Looking around, I find the park has not changed during my slumber. The ducks and swans still sleep on their little island near the center of the pond. The pale woman's house still stands on the corner, warm, amber light spilling from its windows. The small animal in her yard—who's hind legs seem so much like my own—remains quiet. That will change when I begin my rounds, but he will fall silent as always once he recognizes me.

I will bound the fence and peer in through the window.  If the pale woman sleeps, perhaps I will slip in through the basement window as I have done before and find my way to her room. I will squat hunched on her parlor chair and stare over her as she sleeps. I want so badly to talk to her, just as I do the small animal. Perhaps one time I will tug on her sleeve and try to rouse her.

I have many visits to make. I must hurry.

Relishing the sweet scent of the rain, I hurry along the wet, broken sidewalk. There is no lightning this night, no thunder. Only the rain, and it is good.

I have a friend in the green house ahead. I leap the fence and squat still in the back yard. There is a blur in the corner of my eye and my gaze darts to the movement. A chipmunk is running along the length of the clothesline.

A vignette of dream shimmers briefly in my mind. I remember I was crouched in a dark yard, this yard—staring at that same clothesline. I was cold, so cold, and frightened, and I didn't know why. It was far too dark to see anything clearly. I could tell only that there was something hung from the line. Approaching it, I saw how it swung back and forth in the night-wind heavily. It wasn't until I was close enough almost to touch it that I realized what it was.

It was the pale woman's head.

... but I don't want to think about that. It is a dream best forgotten.

I hope my friend in the green house has not gone away like so many others. Crouched beneath his window, I reach up and tap three times. There is no response. I notice the curtains are not fully closed. There is a slight breach between them, perhaps enough to peer through. I rise on my haunches and look in.

There is a stranger glaring back at me!

I scamper away, my heart pounding. Hurling the fence, I flee into the night.

I hope that when I sleep again, I will have no nightmares.

Cutting through the dark of the park, I find a girl lying beneath a tree. Squatting beside her, I cock my head back and forth, perplexed. I like to watch it when their chests slowly rise and fall, as the pale woman’s does. I have always wondered why my own chest does not rise and fall in such a manner. But this girl, her chest does not rise and fall at all.

I tap her on the shoulder. Still she lies unmoving. Finally, I lift her head in my hands. Nothing. I let it drop to the wet grass. It seems odd that she should be without her fur in such chilly weather. I wonder why it is that I should be able to see the grass beneath her head without looking around it. My hands have grown sticky and red.

There is something on her head other than hair and the sticky red stuff. It makes a strange sound as I listen. I remove it and place it on my own head. It is connected somehow to a little silver box. I pull the box to my unmoving chest and press it to me. I have found another friend that makes soothing sounds as I listen.

I leave the girl behind and move on. Perhaps I will visit the pale woman soon. Perhaps I will put the thing to her head and let her listen, too.

There is a fountain in the courtyard on the hill. I like to sit at its edge and gaze into the water. I do so now with the sounds of the little box filling my head.

I have a friend here, too. He is unlike my other friends. He lives in the water. When I gaze into the pool, he is always there to gaze back at me. We play little games. If I smile, so does he. If I frown, so does he.

I like him though his appearance sometimes frightens me. His face seems to push out toward me, not so much as the little animal's but more than a man's. I wish this wasn't so. It only brings his teeth closer to me, which are long and curved, like those of the big animal who had once frightened the smaller one ... but who now sleeps.

My fountain-friend’s ears have changed since last time we met. They now look like the caps of mushrooms and are the color of the sticky fluid matting the sleeping girl's hair.

All else, however, remains the same. His skin is covered in hair—long hair like the pale woman, though it is not the color of mushroom stools but gray. It is not like the hair of the girl in the park, either. It is more like the leafy vines which dangle from my tree to float in the murky water of the pond.

His yellow eyes are huge and slanting—yet sad, like the little animal’s. It seems to me he must get terribly lonely in the fountain, even as I am lonely in my pod. Before moving on, I try to touch my friend's face as I so often have. Again, he shies away and is gone. Somethings must wait to happen.

I run through the park once again. As I pass the girl, I notice there are little insects swarming about her body.

Go away, I tell them. You waste your time; her chest does not rise and fall but is still. I cock my head. My chest does not rise and fall either, yet still they enjoy my company. I decide to let them be and move on.

The pale woman's house is close. It no longer glows from within but is dark. As I scamper across the street I hope that she, too, has not gone away.

I leap the fence and greet the little animal. He is sleeping, that is why he was so silent. I try to wake him by scratching his underbelly. I notice immediately that his chest no longer lifts and falls either. When I lift my hand I notice it is once again sticky with red fluid. 

The little animal's snout is buried in his food dish. Chewed food has spilled from his throat and onto the wet grass. It is sticky red like my hand, which is dark and fuzzy like the face of my fountain-friend, or the tree of which my pod is a part of.

I stand erect to peer into the pale woman's window.

She is there! Unlike the girl and the small animal, her chest lifts up and down just as always. There is a man in the room with her. He sits where I usually sit; in the lap of the chair beside her bed, leaning over her much as I do. Perhaps he is a friend to her, as the face in the fountain is a friend to me.

I drop back down because it hurts to stand so straight, and try the basement window. My hand passes further into the darkness there than usual, and when I withdraw it, there is dark fluid